Appendix: French Collections

Brunet, François; Griffith, Bronwyn

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Appendix: French Collections

François Brunet (Editor), Bronwyn Griffith (Editor)

Images of the West: Survey Photography in French Collections, 1860–1880

~Presented here are only the four main collections which compose the exhibition “Images of the West: Survey Photography in French Collections, 1860–1880.” The Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône and the Club Alpin Français in Paris, which possess only isolated objects, are not mentioned. Although we...

Author

François Brunet (Editor), Bronwyn Griffith (Editor)

PublisherTerra Foundation for American Art

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-20992

Appendix: French Collections

Presented here are only the four main collections which compose the exhibition “Images of the West: Survey Photography in French Collections, 1860–1880.” The Musée Nicéphore Niépce in Chalon-sur-Saône and the Club Alpin Français in Paris, which possess only isolated objects, are not mentioned. Although we believe we have located the main collections relevant to the exploration of the West in the nineteenth century, it is quite possible that there are other, smaller collections elsewhere, especially at learned societies, museums of science, large educational institutions, and some government departments. In fact, there are other collections of nineteenth-century American photographs and illustrated publications (unrelated to our subject) in some libraries, such as the Bibliothèque Céntrale of the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle and the Bibliothèque Administrative de la Ville de Paris (whose unique collection was assembled by Alexandre Vattemare) as well as in archives such as those of the Ministère des Affaires Étrangères. Finally, the private collections (from which most of the images preserved at the Musée d’Orsay and the Département des Estampes et de la Photographie of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France originally come) remain to be explored in greater depth.

Société de Géographie
Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Département des Cartes et Plans

The photographic collection of the Société de Géographie, which boasts tens of thousands of images and thousands of negatives of a geographical and anthropological nature, emerged from obscurity in 2006 thanks to the book that accompanied the exhibition “Trésors Photographiques de la Société de Géographie,” which was conceived by Olivier Loiseaux and held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Fall 2007). While the first donation of images to the Société de Géographie dates back to 1861, the year 1875 was “a turning point in the society’s acknowledgement of photography” (Loiseaux 2006, 199) thanks to the International Congress of Geographical Sciences and the photographic exhibition associated with it. The American explorers played an important role in this watershed. In 1868, the American diplomat W. Heine donated a series of views of the building of the transcontinental railroad (the series is not currently listed). Beginning in 1873–74, the Société de Géographie initiated increasingly frequent contacts with the American explorers through Alphonse Pinart and James Jackson, especially with Ferdinand V. Hayden, whose photographic activity is discussed in the Bulletin in 1874. In early 1875 the Société de Géographie received numerous publications from the “government of the United States” (especially the War Department). Late in the year it received a promise that it would regularly be mailed the publications of Hayden, who became a foreign correspondent of the society at the same time as his rival, Lieutenant Wheeler. It is on the occasion of the International Congress that General Andrew A. Humphreys sent the six portfolios of the King and Wheeler surveys, “magnificent volumes” according to the society’s secretary, Charles Maunoir. Finally donated to the Société de Géographie in late 1876, they contain, respectively, 137 views (King) and about 100 (Wheeler). A copy of the album of fifty views published by the Wheeler survey in 1875 also reached the Société de Géographie. For his part, in 1875 Hayden sent an album of views of Yellowstone, followed by two slightly different copies of the extremely rare album of 1876 containing approximately seven hundred prints. In 1877 the Société de Géographie exhibited John K. Hillers’s large-format images of Hopi villages, which were a gift of the Powell survey. This dynamic relationship between the Société de Géographie and the American explorers resumed in the 1880s, when James Jackson, who had become the society’s archivist, organized and systematized its photographic collection while also soliciting donations throughout the world. The substantial donations of 1875–77, which make up the core of the collection of the Société de Géographie, were supplemented by gifts from the United States Geological Survey (with numerous series by William H. Jackson and John K. Hillers donated in 1889) and members of the Société de Géographie, including Élisée Reclus and above all James Jackson himself.

Musée du Quai Branly
Paris, formerly Musée de l’Homme

Among the museum’s extremely rich holdings in anthropological photography are two North American collections of the first importance, the Pinart collection (with close to three hundred images) and the Simonin collection (with about sixty). These collections primarily consist of Indian portraits from the Shindler-Jackson catalogue (the images may be viewed online at the museum’s website). Alphonse Pinart and Louis Simonin were leading Americanists who traveled to the United States at the end of the Second Empire and during the 1870s (see in particular the columns of the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie and the Pinart archives, preserved at the museum). As early as 1868–69 Simonin collected Indian photographs in the United States. Pinart, who was in the United States in 1874–75, was in close contact with the Hayden survey. The details surrounding the acquisition of these collections, however, remain to be clarified. It is also known that in 1878 the great Americanist Édouard-Théodore Hamy deposited at the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro the objects that would appear in the museum’s anthropological exhibition later that year, and that the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie of the Museum mounted and captioned the Pinart collection after 1880 (information provided by Christine Barthe). In addition, the museum’s library possesses a series of stereoscopic views from the Wheeler survey and a copy of the Wheeler survey’s album of 1875 containing the bookplate of Jules Marcou, a Swiss geologist who worked in the United States, and the stamp of the Société des Américanistes de Paris. Its jewel, finally, is a two-volume copy of the extremely rare album of Indian photographs assembled by William H. Jackson in 1877 and containing 864 pasted prints, which came from the personal library of Paul Broca—it is accompanied by a copy of Jackson’s catalogue of Indian photographs with a dedication by F. V. Hayden. It is worth noting that the second volume of the album contains a series of shots of the Yucatan by Désiré Charnay following the images from Jackson’s catalogue, thus making this copy the only one of its kind.

Musée d’Orsay
Paris

The Musée d’Orsay, which also possesses several other large collections of American photographs, houses several series and isolated images of the exploration effort that come from private collections. The most sizeable group forms part of a 1987 donation by Robert Gérard, a descendant of the French photographer and traveler Léon Gérard, who seems to have been in the United States during the Second Empire. Especially noteworthy are several large-format prints by William H. Jackson and William Notman as well as two smaller prints (one of them by Carleton E. Watkins, p. 17) which are mounted on blue cardboard and accompanied by French captions that seem to have been added when the prints were acquired. Other images and groups of images have been acquired by the museum since its creation, including a pair of Indian portraits by Jackson and Alexander Gardner from the collections of two connoisseurs of Indian objects, Maurice Dérumeaux and Daniel Dubois.

Bibliothèque Nationale de France
Paris, Département des Estampes et de la Photographie

Among the extremely diverse collections of American photographs in the possession of the Cabinet des Estampes are several noteworthy groups related to the exploration effort of 1860–80. Most of them were acquired very early. Thus, a series of nineteen prints of Timothy H. O’Sullivan’s views for the Wheeler survey in 1873 comes from a donation by Wheeler himself (while four other views in the same collection were acquired in 1983). The largest set is drawn from the collection of Georges Sirot, which was assembled in Paris beginning in 1919 and given to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in several stages—of special note is an anthology of views of America containing fifteen images by Carleton E. Watkins (p. 35 and cat. p. 52 and 53). A number of other donations include groups of two or three images by Watkins, Isaiah W. Taber, and William H. Jackson—the latter is also the author of two large views of the railroad that were acquired in 1983.

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